


The Silk-Fine and Lingering, Exquisite Sensation of Triumph

by treeflamingo



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2575637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeflamingo/pseuds/treeflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Asami visits her father in prison, they do nothing but play pai sho.  She wins.  Winning is good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silk-Fine and Lingering, Exquisite Sensation of Triumph

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on the prompt, "The finest pleasures are always the unexpected ones."

The visitation room of Republic City’s high security prison smelled exactly the way Asami expected it to: of metal and sweat. Guilt had an odor, she felt, and that room reeked of it. Resentment mingled with resignation. Agonies of conscience; defiance and denial. Every time she visited her father, she left feeling like she needed a shower. It was a sensation she fiercely repressed: she refused to contract his guilt.

She went every other week. She brought the pai sho board and tiles, and she refused to tell him about anything that happened in her life. Even if he already knew about it (because it was in the headlines, and he was allowed to read the papers; because it was written all over her face, and despite everything he was still her father and understood her best).

The metal bending guard who accompanied her father stood farther back from him than other guards did their inmates. Her father was, she knew, not a physically dangerous man, and she convinced herself that this was the only reason for the distance. It was not the distance of deference, the kind afforded the great by those who attend them. It was not the inevitable product of her father’s ineffable dignity. He was not dignified. He was a criminal. He was a homewrecker.

(But in a small part of her heart, she was proud of him. Even in a prison uniform and cuffs, _her_ father was a leader of men. Even if he was a criminal, _her_ father was a great man. All children reserve a nook in their heart, however small and begrudging, that is dedicated to being proud of their fathers.)

The metal bending guard stood back from her father, and watched her with pity and skepticism. She was indeed a pitiful figure, with no one to call family but a convict. But the mastermind of Future Industries was a wealthy, powerful, brilliant, and beautiful woman. There’s only so much pity such a woman can retain.

Also, she consistently beat her father at pai sho. He was not throwing the games. He was not “going easy” on her. He was losing. He had been placed in the high security prison for his role as the evil genius behind Amon the Equalizer’s offensive front. And he lost to her at pai sho. Every time.

Naturally, this engendered in her a hideously smug little touch of pride. Not that she let it go to her head. Asami was far, far too prudent a strategist to let a few successes skew her judgement. 

What got to her was the metal bending guard.

She had intuited on the first instance of her bringing the pai sho board that the guard assigned to her father could play. His eyes widened a few millimeters in surprise; his brows rose a quirk in appreciation; his gaze was direct with interest. 

Thereafter she watched him from beneath her lashes (it would not do to let him watch her watching him watching them; discretion and secrecy, her old friends, advised her here as they always had). He followed their games intelligently. When a hand paused poised above the board, hesitating, he darted his gaze toward where he thought the piece should go. His thought was frequently a judicious one. His eyes narrowed when a trap was about to be sprung. His jaw tightened when he hadn’t seen the trap coming at all. 

As she won, time after time, his watchful eye hardened from appreciative to strictly interested to wary and calculating.

And this was what got to her. This was what went to her head. This was what put the sashay in her stride, the smirk on her lips, the silk-fine and lingering, exquisite sensation of triumph in her mind. 

Her father had always told her she would surpass him one day. Doing so was merely fulfilling expectations. Her friends didn’t understand the game well enough to challenge her, nevermind be duly impressed with her. But the guard was a connoisseur. An adept. His countenance told her so. 

Her pai sho game put elite, pai-sho-savvy metal, bending guards on edge. 

It felt good to be that good.


End file.
